Forbidden by Susan Johnson (good books to read for teens .TXT) 📕

He knelt on the bed when he reached it and stretched past her and around her for the trigger mechanism on the compartment door nearest him. Opening it with deftness, he leaned farther to touch the release on a second door with a familiarity Daisy found annoying. She had no ownership on his past, she understood in a rational way, yet she found herself resentful and jealous of any hint of previous women. And despite what he'd chosen to deny, this bed, if not here, somewhere else, had been shared by some of his lovers. He was too well acquainted with its subtleties.

"Did you look at everything?" he casually asked, when all the decorative doors were open in the high, fluted half-circle of the molded headboard and footboard. "The Sultan apparently liked amusement."

Within the numerous small compartments were perfumes and oils, playtoys for sexual pleasure, silk cords in rainbow shades attached to metal rings, small containers of scented scarlet rouge. A delicate razor in engraved gold. Feathers with carved ivory grips, curved to accommodate the hand.

"I didn't recognize some things. What are these for?" Daisy asked, leaning over to extract two little cloissoine' pots of rouge.

"Harem houris accent their nipples and genitals with a rouge… a tradition apparently of Eastern seduction."

"How do you know?"

He shrugged as he lay lounging against the pillows. "I thought everyone knew."

"Like multiplication tables."

Daisy's sarcasm raised his brow fractionally. "Like adult games," he softly corrected.

"And this?" She took out the diminutive gold razor. "For disposing of nonplayful houris?"

He grinned. "You wouldn't have lasted a day in a harem." But his fingers were gentle when he stroked the dark hair of her pubic area. "For shaving that," he said, "so the rouge will show. The Eastern male finds red inflaming."

"Do you?"

"I don't know."

"Liar."

"Do the Absarokee have these?" he asked instead of arguing the finer points of his past love life. From velvet-lined containers he took out two dildos of modest size, both astonishingly of blown glass.

"Not in glass."

Daisy's casual reply ignited his temper with electrifying speed. And his formerly benign gaze instantly narrowed. "How do you know?" he snapped in ill-natured rebuke.

"I thought everyone did," she took great pleasure in replying. "If one's an adult," she coyly added.

His nostrils flared for a moment before saner counsel reminded him Daisy's open sensuality was one of her heady charms. "Touché," he murmured with a smile.

"Are you jealous?"

Unequipped and unprepared for so novel a sensation, he was honest at least. "Unreasonably, I think."

"This is an educational experience then for you."

"Do you think so? Why?" He was curious of her answer when she spoke with such fastidious pedantry.

"Any new experience is enlightening." She grinned. "And you'll appreciate me more."

"In that case," he said with a matching grin, "I look forward to my education. I thought for a moment, you'd gone prim on me."

"You don't know me."

"No." He didn't. "You're never prim then?"

"Never in bed."

"Don't say things like that." His voice was very low.

"Would you prefer I were a virgin?"

He didn't like virgins, had never seen the advantage or appeal in the condition. Had always made a point of avoiding them. "Yes," he said, knowing his answer brought him beyond reason or rationale. "That would be nice."

Her smile was chaste and virtuous as she sat beside him on the Sultan's bed, but her eyes were the same seductive eyes that had captivated him at Adelaide's. "I'd be happy then," she said, her voice melodic with heated promise, "to be your innocent virgin. I'm accommodating, you see… to your notions of propriety."

Anyone knowing the Duc would have been surprised he was familiar with the word. "Or impropriety," he added with a smile.

"Later…" she proposed, "we'll work on that. Now, do you have a preference in colors on these silk cords?"

Some moments later, tied hand and foot with silk cords, he lay tranquil and fascinated, his arousal beautifully formed, his breathing calm, watching Daisy shave her pubic hair. Once she used some of the perfumed oil as lubricant, the razor glided over her skin smoothly. "This razor is remarkably sharp," she murmured, looking up at him, her eyes insinuating, "for something so old."

"Damascus steel," the Duc softly countered.

Newly replaced, she warranted. But then he was tied and she was not… so some small retaliation for his dissimulation was entirely possible.

Her newly shaved skin glistened with oil and as she reached for the small rouge pot, Etienne said, "You'll have to wipe that oil off before putting on the rouge."

Her eyes held his for a moment in a brief flaring irritation, but she said, "Thank you for the information," sweetly as though it didn't matter that he knew the procedure in such detail.

She applied the scarlet rouge to her nipples first, lingering in the application, making sure the aureoles were completely covered to their outer perimeters, carefully smoothing a perfect rounded border of crimson with her fingertip; taking care next to gently tug her crested nipples into high peaked hardness before painting them red like luscious glistening cherries.

"Have I missed anything?" Her eyes held his for a moment, contemplating the extent of his interest.

His gaze lazily undertook to survey her handiwork; he had more experience than she in this particular amorous game. "The perfection of a trained houri, darling… tempting as sin."

The style of his insouciance: complimentary, courteous, eminently practiced, touched her momentarily with a small vexation before she considered how pleasant it would be to infringe on that nonchalance.

Moving slightly into Etienne's line of vision, Daisy gracefully disposed herself into a provocative pose—like the Gupta sculptures from India, where the females seemed eternally accommodating… with their thighs spread open in a great curving arc and their ankles crossed. As though framing the object of male desire. Reaching for the towel he'd dried his face with earlier, she wiped the oil from her skin, then looked up to see whether Etienne was suitably attentive. She spread the crimson rouge over the soft pouting flesh of her labia with slow gliding strokes, daubing the